Your daily dose of news and tidbits from the world of money in politics:

BILL REPRIMANDS NLRB: A bill (H.R. 2587) passed by the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday aims to prevent the National Labor Relations Board from ordering companies to close or relocate employees.

The bill arises from a recent court case controversy in which the NLRB filed a complaint against defense contractor Boeing Co. for deciding to open a non-union plant in South Carolina.

The complaint has stirred strong responses from both political parties. So the bill’s support shouldn’t come as a surprise, especially if you consider Boeing’s clout in Washington.

Boeing, the world’s top plane manufacturer and a top contractor with the Department of Defense, is a heavy hitter in federal politics. Last year, the company spent $17.8 million on federal lobbying. That massive sum wasn’t an outlier either — the defense giant dropped $17.5 million in 2008 and $16.8 million in 2009 on lobbying costs, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

CHANGES IN PA’S POWER?: GOP leaders in Pennsylvania are considering changing how the state’s Electoral College votes are awarded in time for the 2012 presidential election, Politics PAreports.

Distribution of the state’s 20 Electoral College votes would go from the traditional method, where the winner of the state’s popular votes gets all of the state’s Electoral College votes, to a method in which each congressional district awards its own Electoral College vote to the winner of the vote there. The remaining two Electoral College votes would go to the winner of the state-wide popular vote.

The story’s made national news because of the size of Pennsylvania’s impact on presidential races. Pennsylvania is a potential swing state, where the Republican candidate will be looking to challenge President Barack Obama.

During the 2008 election cycle, residents of the Keystone State contributed $83 million to federal candidates and committees, the seventh most of any state, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics. Of that, 55 percent went to Democrats, including $11 million to Obama. Meanwhile, Obama’s GOP rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) collected about $4.7 million from residents of Pennsylvania.

So far this year, the state’s residents have given about $6.5 million to each party, according to the Center’s research, with Obama being the No. 1 beneficiary among presidential candidates of money from Pennsylvanians.

“If the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes,” as Mother Jonespoints out, and Obama would get only eight. The result would be the equivalent of Obama losing a Democratic-leaning medium-sized state like Washington, which has 12 Electoral College votes.

UBS WOES CONTINUE: A London trader at UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, could cause the bank to be unprofitable in the third quarter after a $2 billion loss from an unauthorized trade, Bloombergreports.

The bank’s stock fell 11 percent following the announcement, the most since March 2009. It is the latest loss for the bank that has suffered mightily from the credit crisis.

The company’s troubles are reflected in its lobbying spending. The firm spent $720,000 on lobbying in 2007, just before the credit crisis and global financial meltdown. But the company has spent less than $600,000 every year since, including only $190,000 during the first half of this year, according to the Center’s research.

The company’s PAC and employees are also donating less than they used to before the crash — although they are still making strategic investments.

During the 2010 election cycle, the people and PACs affiliated with UBS donated $906,000 to candidates and committees. That’s down from about $1.2 million during the 2006 election cycle.

Except for the Revolving Door section, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License by OpenSecrets.org. To request permission for commercial use, please contact us.